Netboots

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Political Wisdom

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Senate Democrat Contact Info and Statements of Position

This "contact info" list is not complete yet -- it's formatted inconsistently, and is still missing some of the senators' local office phone numbers and email/webmail links. But it contains every senator's main phone number, most of their email/webmail links, and can be printed out and used as a "checklist" to keep track of who you've called or written. And where individual district office numbers are given, constituents have a place to call that's not lost in the DC shuffle (or even make multiple calls, one to each number).

It seemed better to post it, incomplete, than not to post it at all. I'll have time to finish it soon, hopefully Monday evening, and will update it then. Thanks!(CLICK HERE TO VISIT VICHYDEMS)

Dayton, Mark (D-MN) Position statement: Dayton is opposed to censure, saying that while he thinks the President is doing wrong, he refuses to play "presidential politics" by supporting Feingold's motion. Of course, what that really means is that he doesn't support Feingold for President, and is willing to allow the President to continue breaking the law if that's what it takes to defeat Feingold -- so Dayton, not Feingold is the one putting "Presidential politics" about principle. Don't waste your time trying to change his mind, but remember this the next time Dayton seeks grassroots support.Tone Devices for the Deaf (TDD)Telephone numbers:Senate switchboard, toll-free: 888-355-3588Dayton's D.C. office direct line: (202) 224-office telephone:office telephone:office telephone: Fax numbers:D.C. Faxoffice fax:office fax:office fax:Senator Dayton webmail link

Reid, Harry (D-NV)Position statement: Reid is the Senate Democratic Leader; well-intentioned and good at posturing but weak at enforcing party discipline and unhappy about Feingold bringing this resolution without telling him first. Tell Reid to put that behind him: you not only want him to vote for censure, but you want him to exercise leadership for a change and rally the other Senators to do the same.Telephone numbersMain Capitol switchboard number (all Congressional offices): 888-355-3588D.C. office direct line: 202-224-3542D.C. office direct line toll-free from Nevada: 866-SEN-REID (866-736-7343)Carson City office telephone: 775-882-7343Reno office telephone: 775-686-5750Las Vegas office telephone: 702-388-5020Fax numbersD.C. office fax: 202-224-7327Carson City office fax: 775-883-1980Reno office fax: 775-686-5757Las Vegas office fax: 702-388-5030Senator Reid webmail link

Roots Project: NSA Surveillance Hearings Campaign Update

The Intelligence Committee hearing will begin at 2:30 pm ET Tuesday March 7.

Here’s an update on how our NSA Surveillance/Senate Intelligence Committee campaign is doing:

IMPORTANT: It’s still unclear how Senator Snowe intends to vote tomorrow. Some readers have reported (and Glenn Greenwald has duly passed along their reports) that Snowe’s office says she will vote FOR hearings. But as of the time of this posting, her office has told me she has issued NO STATEMENT one way or the other. I don’t know whether this is a miscommunication within her office or whether she’s backsliding, but it’s not good news.

At this point, therefore, I’m continuing to list both Snowe and Hagel as UNDECIDED on the question of whether the Intelligence Committee should hold hearings into the NSA surveillance. I have left voice messages for both senators’ communications directors and will let you know as soon as I have updated information. Meanwhile, keep up the phone calls, emails and faxes.

In other news:

Rockefeller’s office forwarded a copy of Reid’s press release to me over the weekend, via Blackberry -- so they’re not only on top of the situation, but using newly-licensed proprietary technology to do it!

UPDATE, 12:12 PM PT: In case you don't think what we do makes a difference: in the last hour, this site has had visits from at least two people in Washington, D.C., one whose ISP is the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms (the Senate ISP) and who surfed over from Glenn Greenwald's most recent post on Frist's machinations, and one whose ISP is the Library of Congress Information Technology Service and who surfed over from TomPaine.com. 2:38 pm: Make that three: someone in D.C. whose ISP is the Administrator of the U.S. Courts, who surfed here from Glenn's. Yeah, I know, probably a bored District Court law clerk, but I prefer to think it's Sam Alito, quavering in his boots about the prospect of the People rising up.

UPDATE, 2:55 PM PT: Snowe's and Hagel's office still are keeping mum on their positions. My best bet? Frist is close to pulling off an upset, with major pork heading to Maine and Nebraska if Snowe and Hagel play ball, and they're keeping their cards close.

And Sen. Rockefeller's office doesn't seem to have any better info than we do at this point; here's word I just received from them:

Wish I had some insight for you, but it’s really unclear what’s going to happen. My best guess is Republicans will come up with some alternative proposal for a review and that they’ll try and get Hagel and Snowe to vote for that version. It’s really up in the air at the moment.

Roots Project: ALL HANDS ON DECK

We're not just in Kansas anymore, Toto. Bill Frist is threatening to unilaterally change the Senate Intelligence Committee’s rules to cut out the minority’s role unless the ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller, caves in on his demand for hearings on the warrantless NSA spying program. We have to move fast to make our voices heard.

I've written about how Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) promised ranking minority member Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) not just a vote on Rockefeller's motion for hearings into the warrantless NSA surveillance program, but hearings themselves. I've written about how Roberts broke that promise and infuriated Rockefeller here, what the "inside politics" were here and here, and how Roberts was "stung" by the negative feedback he received, especially from the major newspapers inside Kansas, here. I've written about the three crummy Republican proposals to bury the whole scandal here, and I've written about the heavy pressure Bill Frist, Roberts and others are bringing to bear on the two independent-minded (and Constitution-respecting) Republicans on that committee here.

Apparently those two honest Republicans are holding firm so far, because now Glenn Greenwald tells us that Bill Frist is threatening to bypass the Committee altogether by rewriting the rules to avoid hearings. Of course, Frist calls it necessary to ensure "oversight" due to Democratic "partisanship", but that's just Orwell-speak: it's really a partisan Republican effort to "disappear" the NSA scandal to avoid catastrophic Republican losses in next November’s Congressional midterm elections.

Basically, Frist is threatening to do to the Intelligence Committee what he threatened to do to the judicial filibuster: rewrite the Senate's rules to ensure the minority has no power and no voice. Godwin's law be damned: it's fascism, pure and simple, and it cannot be allowed.

One of these days the Democratic Senate leadership will figure out that bullies keep bullying until you punch them in the nose. Had they stood up as a group and successfully filibustered Alito, and stood their ground in the subsequent nuclear winter, we would not be having this problem. But they didn't, and we are, and so we citizens are back on the firing line, trying to give our leaders spine transplants. (Update: ReddHedd at FDL reports that Harry Reid did fire back rhetorically at Frist; let's hope he follows words with deeds.)

This means our current Maine-Nebraska Roots Project, and our recent Kansas Roots Project, are opening up. We need to fight on several fronts now:

2. RESIDENTS OF KANSAS, MAINE, NEBRASKA, NEVADA, WEST VIRGINIA, AND TENNESSEE: Take state-specific action, as follows:

KANSANS: If Frist succeeds, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts will LOSE power, because the committee he chairs will have been neutered. If he wants to remain a player in Republican party politics instead of a reliably-impotent lapdog, as well as honor his oath of office to respect and defend the Constitution, he needs to stand up to Frist and demand that his committee's rules be left alone. Kansans need to email, fax and call Roberts' DC and District offices and demand that he not permit the Intelligence Committee's rules to be changed. IDENTIFY YOURSELF AS A KANSAN. Contact info for Pat Roberts is under “Bad Guys.”

MAINERS AND NEBRASKANS: It's too late now to have Letters to the Editor published. Instead, email, fax and call Olympia Snowe's and Chuck Hagel's DC and local offices to praise them for standing firm and reinforce that we want them to resist Frist's meddling with the Intelligence Committee's rules AND to keep demanding real hearings into the NSA program, not just the whitewashes that DeWine, Specter, and Graham are proposing. IDENTIFY YOURSELF AS A NEBRASKAN OR MAINER. Contact info for Snowe and Hagel is under “Moderates/Swing Votes.”

NEVADANS: Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, is well-intentioned but weak when it comes to party discipline. Remind him how the Republicans are still stalling on the Iraq War Intelligence report, and urge him to support Jay Rockefeller and demand REAL hearings this time. Contact info for Harry Reid is under “Good Guys.”

WEST VIRGINIANS: Your Senator, Jay Rockefeller, is doing great work. Email, fax and/or call and tell him so, and urge him not to cave in and compromise on either the Committee Rules or on his call for hearings. We’re tired of compromise and want to fight, and damn the torpedoes. Contact info for Jay Rockefeller is under “Good Guys.”

TENNESSEEANS: Call, email and fax Bill Frist’s DC AND District offices and politely give him hell, both for trying to change the Intelligence Committee's rules and for trying to whitewash the NSA program instead of holding fair, bipartisan hearings. Let him know you’re a Tennessee voters and you’ll remember how he handles this situation when you vote next November. Contact info for Bill Frist is under “Bad Guys.”

3. EVERYONE ELSE IN AMERICA: This is no longer a primarily local effort. All Americans have the right to be heard, so make calls. Just run down the Contact Information list below: Good Guys (praise and encourage to stand firm); Moderate/Swing Votes (praise and encourage to hold hearings); Bad Guys (tell them you know what they’re up to with the Intelligence Committee rule change threat, and shame, shame, shame).

EVERYONE: USE YOUR OWN THOUGHTS AND WORDS: We're not Republicans and don't have an echo chamber, which makes us both more honest and more persuasive.

Fight hard and have fun. It all comes to a head Tuesday when the Intelligence Committee meets.*******CONTACT INFORMATION

MAIN CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD: ALL D.C. OFFICES CAN BE REACHED TOLL-FREE HERE: 888-355-3588

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

GAME PLAN: SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, THIS TIME FOR KEEPS

Duplicate of post originally published on http://vichydems.blogspot.com; please visit there for more background, status reports, comments, and discussion.

The Roots Project is an effort by a loose group of bloggers, including VichyDems, Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, John Amato of Crooks & Liars, and Digby of Hullabaloo, to work with local bloggers in each state to mobilize local grassroots/netroots/”netboots” efforts.

Today we’re rolling out an ambitious plan: to turn out both national and in-state activists, for two states (Nebraska and Maine), on two fronts (calls to senators and letters to editors). Here’s the skinny:

The Issue: Warrantless NSA surveillance of American citizens. More specifically, calling for the Senate Judiciary Committee -- which punted the ball last time (more here, here, and especially here) -- to commit to holding hearings into the NSA’s wiretap program.

The Timeline: The Senate Intelligence Committee meets next on March 7. We’re hammering them between now and then, including at night and over the weekend.

The Senators: The two key senators here are Olympia Snowe in Maine and Chuck Hagel in Nebraska. Both are moderate Republicans who have expressed unease with the NSA program. Both sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee (whose chair, Pat Roberts, we targeted in our Kansas effort last week). While we’re at it, we’ll also tell those states’ other two senators, Ben Nelson (D-NB) and Susan Collins (R-ME), that we want Congressional oversight into the NSA issue. They don’t sit on the key Intelligence Committee, but still have important voices in the overall discussion.

The Media: Contact information for the key newspapers in both states is included in today’s Game Plan. We want them flooded with enough Letters to the Editor that at least a few get through, hopefully stimulating more public debate and possibly influencing the policymakers’ decisions. At the very least, we won’t allow the issue to be ignored, the way the White House wants.

The Goal: Congressional hearings into the NSA issue -- and ones that are as broad as possible, NOT merely to amend the law to retroactively make illegal activity legal.

A little detail: the White House wants to either ignore the whole mess or, if they can’t, to get the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”) amended to, as Glenn Greenwald put it, “simply exempt the whole warrantless NSA program from the requirements of FISA.” White House lackey Mike DeWine (R-OH) is pushing for the “make Bush King” approach. We have to make clear that we reject the DeWine approach: WE WANT REAL HEARINGS INTO THE NSA PROGRAM, AND REAL OVERSIGHT BY CONGRESS TO PROTECT OUR RIGHTS.

Get more background info on the NSA fiasco on Wikipedia, then read Jane and Glenn and John for talking points and more detailed analysis of the issues.

Who Can Participate? What’s the Game Plan?EVERYONE can participate in this one, NOT JUST MAINE AND NEBRASKA RESIDENTS. This is a national issue, so this is a national Game Plan. But we’re breaking you into teams:

Residents of Maine or Nebraska, or who have roots there: Politicians pay a lot more attention to in-state feedback, since what they really care about is votes. So residents of those states get to do the whole shebang. We want you writing letters to the editor using your local addresses; those are much more likely to get published. We also want you emailing, webmailing, faxing, and telephoning your senators, at BOTH their DC AND DISTRICT (in-state) offices. Be sure to tell the staffers what your connection to the state is.

Everyone else: Feel free to write letters to the editor if you have some reason to believe they might get published, and to call the key senators during business hours if that’s more convenient for you. But if the phones are very busy during the daytime, that might mean that in-state callers aren’t able to get through. In that case, please consider making your calls at night and over the weekend, and leaving voicemails. Why? (1) Local callers will have an easier time getting through during business hours, when they can engage with staffers on a personal level, and (2) There’s no one there on the weekends to ask where you live, so you don’t have to tell them in your message. But don’t overstress on “who calls when.” The important thing is to make the calls.

That’s it! All the contact info you’ll ever need is below; and to make it even easier, I’m proving internal links to help you jump to the right spot:

Ben Nelson (D-NB) (Not on any relevant committees at this time; simply register your gneral desire to see hearings and oversight of the NSA program. FWIW, Sen. Nelson is a conservative Democrat who voted with the Republicans last year than he did with the Democrats, and who voted not only for cloture, but for Samuel Alito's nomination itself. "Party loyalty" approaches won't work with him. Appeals to the principle of checks and balances and to the dangers of a completely unsupervised Executive, however, might.)Senator Nelson webmail

Lewiston Sun JournalLetters to the Editor,Sun Journal,P.O. Box 4400,Lewiston, ME04243-4400Guidelines : Max 250 words. Name and telephone number required; I suggest including address as well, to establish local connection.How to Submit : Snail mail to the above address, orFax to 207-777-3436, orLetters webform, orEmail to letters@sunjournal.com

York County Journal TribuneGuidelines: None given; I recommend including name, address and telephone to establish local connection.How to Submit :Fax to 207-282-3138, orEmail City Editor Nick Cowenhoven at ncowenhoven@journaltribune.com

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Portland Press HeraldP.O. Box 1460Portland, ME 04104-5009Guidelines : Max 250 words. Name, address and home and work phone numbers. Readers will be contacted before their letters are published.How to submit : Snail mail to address above, orFax to (207) 828-8154, orEmail to letterstotheeditor@pressherald.com

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The Republican Journal (no, I’m not kidding! Give it a shot!)Guidelines: None given; I recommend including name, address and telephone to establish local connection.How to submit :Email Editor Daniel Dunkle at trjmail@courierpub.com

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The Times RecordBox 10Brunswick, ME 04011Guidelines : 350 words max. I recommend including name, address and telephone to establish local connection.How to Submit : Snail mail to the above address, orFax to (207) 721-3151, orletters@timesrecord.com

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Welcome to the NetBoots

We've all heard about the Netroots, but there's a movement to translate online talk into something more tangible: grassroots activism, blogs empowering "boots on the ground" politics. NetBoots.

At our sister site, Vichy Democrats aka VichyDems, which began shortly before the Alito filibuster and was active in that fight, we post on two related but distinguishable topics: (1) articles and links about the Vichys, DINOs, triangulators, accommodationists, Blue Dogs and other marginal Democrats that sometimes just need to reminded what they stand for and other times drag the Democratic Party down; and (2) detailed "Game Plans" that empower people to take action, including talking points, strategies, links to other action groups, and the most detailed contact information available on Congressional representatives, newspapers -- whoever we're trying to inform or persuade.

Here at NetBoots, we hope to streamline things by hosting and posting ONLY the second of the above -- the Game Plans. The same information will always be cross-posted at http://vichydems.blogspot.com, and we encourage people to visit there early and often. But sometimes folks just want to cut to the chase and take action. If you're one of those, we're not gonna stand in your way. Want to know what you can do to reclaim American democracy (and Democracy)? Don't want a lot of talk cluttering up your commitment to taking action? Want to continue the momentum that drove us all so compellingly during the Alito filibuster fight? Then this is the place for you. There always will be a Game Plan underway here, so any time you feel the urge to make a difference, swing by, see what's currently underway, and dig in.

You'll be glad you did, we'll be glad you did, and together we will change the world.